Maxine Patton was asleep when the phone rang at 2:30 a.m. The news was bad. Sheriff's deputies had found her daughter's car stuck on a railroad track on Hardy Road in north Harris County with the girl's keys and purse still inside.

Maxine's husband was working a night shift at the Houston Fire Department, so she woke up their 20-year-old son. Together, they went looking for Judy, but her car was hard to find. The sheriff's deputies who discovered the vehicle waited for Patton's family for more than an hour but had already left the area by the time they arrived.

Judy's brother found her badly beaten body 116 feet away from her car in a grassy area next to a railroad track. She was lying on her side with her mouth open. She had a crushed chest and abdomen, a broken back and a fractured skull. Her death was ruled a homicide.

That was 30 years ago, on Nov. 25, 1980. All these years, Judy's death has remained unsolved. But earlier this month, the Harris County Sheriff's Office submitted almost all of the physical evidence recovered from her slaying for DNA testing.

"We're hopeful," said Sgt. Eric Clegg of the Harris County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Squad. "There are some things we hope really come back in our favor. I mean, in 1980, the technology was nowhere near what it is now."

Judy's parents, who moved away from the Houston area several months after her death and returned two years ago, are now in their 70s and also would like to see her case solved.

"I think they need to pay for the rest of their life," Maxine, 74, said of her daughter's killer. "They've already had 30 years of freedom."

Detectives had a suspect in the case back in 1980, a man listed as the only suspect throughout the Sheriff's Office case file. He was Judy's 21-year-old ex-boyfriend. Their relationship soured when she learned he had gotten another 19-year-old woman pregnant, detectives and Judy's family members said.

Now 51, the man has continued to live in the Houston area. The Houston Chronicle is not identifying him because he has never been charged in Patton's death.

Detectives questioned him twice in 1980 and both times he denied killing Patton. The ex-boyfriend then got an attorney and stopped cooperating with detectives, refusing to answer any further questions, Clegg said.

An evening with friends

Judy, a vivacious, attractive brunette who had attended Nimitz and Aldine high schools, had been married once for about a year and later divorced. At the time of her death, she lived with her parents on Greens Road and worked at a Chef's Warehouse while attending college.

On the night of Nov. 24, 1980, Judy finished work around 6 p.m., then shopped with a girlfriend at Greenspoint Mall until the stores closed at 9 p.m. She and her friend then went to another young man's house, a new fellow who had recently begun romancing Judy and has been ruled out as a suspect.

Judy later gave her girlfriend a ride home, dropping her off around 12:15 a.m. It was the last time anyone saw her alive.

Within the hour, a security guard at the Gator Hawk plant in the 19000 block of Hardy Road near Richey Road saw two vehicles repeatedly driving up and down the street in both directions as if the cars were racing — or as if one vehicle was chasing the other, Clegg said.

At one point, one of the vehicles pulled into Gator Hawk's parking lot, while the other stayed out on Hardy Road, then turned around, the security guard told detectives. The guard later heard a sound similar to a car skidding across gravel, Clegg said.

Both vehicles ended up across the street in the 19100 block of Hardy, the security guard told detectives. After about 20 minutes, the guard, who never left his post, saw one of the vehicles leaving, heading north on Hardy, detectives said.

Sheriff's deputies found Judy's 1969 green Nova abandoned on the railroad spur at 12:50 a.m., with one of its rear tires stuck on the track. Her purse and keys were still inside, but there were no signs of a struggle and no blood in or around the car.

"It's just pure speculation, but we feel like she was probably running from the vehicle," Clegg said.

Judy's mother and brother had trouble finding her car but eventually found it. Her brother then began searching the area around the railroad tracks and found his sister's body at 5:25 a.m. She was fully clothed and did not appear to have been sexually assaulted.

Many of her injuries were to the right side of her body. Her right arm, right leg and both elbows were broken, detectives said.

Detectives aren't sure if she was attacked with some sort of tool or if she was hit by a car - or possibly both. Her family believes she might have been beaten or stomped to death.

The suspect told detectives in 1980 that he had arrived home from work the night before her death at 5 p.m. and woke up at 7 a.m. on the morning Patton's body was found, Clegg said.

Plenty of possibilities

Detectives eventually told the family they didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest in the case because they had no eyewitnesses to the slaying and had not found the weapon used to kill Judy.

Clegg and his partner also are open to the possibility the man considered a suspect in 1980 isn't the person who killed her.

"This could be just a bad guy she ran into on the road," Clegg said of Judy's killer. "We're definitely not saying (the 1980 suspect) did it."

Judy's parents suffered another setback several years ago when they received a message on their answering machine from a woman claiming she had information about their daughter's slaying. Judy's mother accidentally erased the message. Efforts to retrieve it were unsuccessful.

Detectives hope the DNA tests will turn up leads - or perhaps witnesses who didn't step forward before or were too frightened to speak out 30 years ago will contact them soon.

"I would like nothing better than to get some phone calls," said Sgt. Dean Holtke of the sheriff's Cold Case Squad.